


you can find me dancin' in between the raindrops.

by orphan_account



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/F, High School/Teen AU, Lesbian AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 09:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24348406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Your friendly neighborhood Gigi x Crystal Midwestern Suburban YA Novel AU, aka Gigi drives around in their parents’ Ice Cream truck, and picks up a girl one night who they never wants to leave behind.
Relationships: Gigi Goode/Crystal Methyd
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	you can find me dancin' in between the raindrops.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the prompt: “When I’m with you, I’m happy.”
> 
> This story is a Lesbian AU, but I chose to use they/them pronouns for Gigi throughout. If that makes y’all mad, I mean, we can talk about it, I guess? Inbox me. I probably won’t do that for every fic with Gigi in it, but for this one, it just felt correct! There’s no discussion of gender/identity at all between the characters in the story- only a little bit of awkward writing because Crystal doesn’t know Gigi when she first sees them, but you the readers will still be able to tell who is speaking and who is doing what.)
> 
> (CW: Someone gets into a car with a stranger they just met. I know these warnings are annoying when they’re not for “tricky” content, y'all sometimes they just gotta be said.)

They meet in the middle of the summer; when there’s a midwestern heatwave that threatens to squeeze out the very last of Gigi’s patience in their bedroom, where there’s not much to do but lie on the hardwood, twiddling their thumbs on their brother’s Xbox; because her sewing machine’s close to burning out anyway; and it’s the final week before college move-in, so their family’s almost at its tipping point too: three kids all together with their parents while sweat practically melts into the dirt around their garden fence.

Well, that’s not really true. There is something Gigi could be doing, but it would necessitate actually getting up off the floor, not just killing aliens; or something. The hours are blurring together as their pink and orange tipped fingernails squeeze down buttons, juice running down their wrists from the frozen blueberries that were the only cold snack left in the house.

The sun’s almost setting when Gigi makes up their mind, switches off the TV and goes digging in their closet for the little silvery-white minidress that they’ve always been surprised, grows with them through the years. They’ve been part of the family business now, ever since their Dad first bought the ice cream truck when Gigi was four, sitting on its metal counter, swinging their legs as they served the kids at the park. But of course, times had changed, the truck becoming more of a novelty around their neighborhood, than a regular source of income. 

Not that it kept their mom from making new uniforms every year, the black bow starched and stiff around their neck, the buttons shining in the setting light of the day, as Gigi takes the keys from the counter, flipping them in their palm as they pull up the laces of bright blue sneakers. 

“Where are you going?”, their mother shouts from the kitchen, and Gigi only shrugs. 

“Victory lap.”, they reply, the door clicking closed behind them, as they start up the truck, checking on its cooling systems, waiting for the engine to turn over.

It’s suffocating in this place, the edges of the little town marked off from wild highways always feeling so suspiciously like they’re prison bars to Gigi, who craves the freedom of a wild, open night.

It’s too late for the kids to be up in their suburb, but there’s a couple of even smaller little outcroppings of homes and streets, not ten minutes away, so they chart a course against the pink moon rising in the sky, down the highway. 

* * *

Crystal is standing on the corner when the ice cream truck loops around her cul-de-sac, palms sticky with sweat, her dark curls sticking to her neck underneath the collar of the shirt she’d found at the thrift shop just that morning, smelling of dusty old books and a slight hint of baby powdered perfume that lingers on the tip of her nose as she watches the ice cream truck round the corner.

Goode’s is practically an urban legend, like a cryptid held over from a time long gone, with a speaker that sticks out of the blue soft serve cone on the hood, blaring the familiar music that she’s only ever heard before at the circus.

Crystal wonders if all Ice Cream Trucks can only have one playlist, digging into her pockets for her dollar bills. It’s so close to the end of summer, when she will have to leave all of this behind, but the heat is so thick, that the stars hanging in the pink-clouded sky almost feel like they’re hanging on to this moment in time, too, suspending it so she won’t miss a single moment.

The truck stops, just a few steps in front of her, and brakes scrape against pavement as Crystal watches the person inside shuffle between the driver’s seat and the back, throwing open the pink and white awning that hides shelved fridges full of cold treats, and a faded white counter where she leans her body against, mouth pressed up to the glass that separates them.

“Good Morning!”, they greet her, cheerily, brushing a brown curl behind their ear, the glass window sliding open.

“It’s like ten thirty.”, Crystal mutters to herself, but she repeats the phrase on the side of the truck anyway, a speech bubble above a woman in a red-and-white t-shirt and a denim jumper, holding up a Popsicle dripping in her hand.

“Good Morning, Miss Goode!”

They giggle, like they can’t quite believe it, shaking their head at Crystal’s enthusiasm. Little silver hoops, threaded through yellow beads, bounce on their neck, and Gigi smiles behind juicy, red, glossed lips.

“It’s actually just Gigi! But, what can I get for you today? I’m assuming you’re on an ice cream run for the whole house?”

Crystal shakes her head. “Actually… just for me. I was just going for a walk and it’s… hot, you know?”

Objectively, Gigi is beautiful, and Crystal is alone; spending her nights kicking cans in alleyways and hanging out in the parking lot at the mall, waiting for her friends to get off their shifts, so she can pick them up and they can drive on the highway and watch the sunrise, careful to tiptoe around the conversations none of them are ready for: how Crystal won’t leave this town, how she’ll still ride with her dad in his truck in the morning, looking for her new apartment in places they had always promised each other they wouldn’t be caught dead in.

“Yeah. I just needed to get out of the house, too.”, Gigi tells her. “Were you looking for anything specific? Our soft serve machine obviously doesn’t work right now. Sorry.”

Gigi taps the counter with their nails, perfectly manicured in a way that makes Crystal swell with both jealousy and interest. She hasn’t had the time to get her nails done in forever, not that she’d ever keep them perfect like Gigi’s for long, anyway.

“Oh- um, what about a sorbet? Bar? A sorbet bar? Do you still have those?”, Crystal fumbles her words a little, hoping Gigi won’t notice. She’s relieved to find that Gigi’s back is already to the window, their thin, pale arms digging in the silver chest behind her.

“I’ve got blue raspberry and banana. Is that okay?”, Gigi asks, each held by the stick in their hands as she turns back to Crystal, their smile easy, nose and cheeks and fingertips pink with the chill of the still-open freezer chest.

Crystal nods with a dry mouth, her damp dollar bills shoved under the glass without another word as they make their exchange.

“It’s pretty good, right?”, Gigi asks, glossed lips lancing through Crystal’s thoughts with the same sharpness as the cool tip of the blue raspberry sorbet bar in her mouth.

“Um… yeah.”

Gigi lets her float in the sticky silence, long lashes blinking across their cheeks.

“Hey, what was your name again?”

“Crystal.”, she says through a mouthful of iced sugar, blue syrup dribbling, humiliatingly from the corner of her mouth. Cool, sweet drops drip down to her collarbone, running white-blue into the collar of her shirt. As if her evening couldn’t get any worse, Gigi giggles.

But Gigi’s eyes aren’t sharp when Crystal’s flash up, instead, they’re wide open and warm as the darkening night, their lips curling up in a small smile.

“You wanna come in here and finish that? So it doesn’t melt? I promise I’m not a freak.”, Gigi says, almost too fast for Crystal to believe, the glass window swinging open with a push on its inside knob.

“I can’t promise I’m not.”, Crystal teases, climbing up the tire guards so she can sit on top of the open counter, balancing on the very outside corner so she won’t melt all over Gigi’s pristine, white dress.

“Do you live around here?”

“Mmhmm.”

Crystal points up at the yellow-shuttered house that holds her whole entire life, surprised she’s not quite as ashamed of it with Gigi, who only nods when they see it. There’s no barely-hidden pity that she has no plans beyond the sunflowers in their garden.

“I live like, twenty minutes away. So that must be why we’ve never met.”

Gigi scoots closer to Crystal, resting their forearms on the counter. “I try to keep track of all the cute girls around here, just so I know what my options are.”

Crystal’s eyes widen.

“You free tonight?”, she blurts out, her lips still chill with frozen sugar, her chin pale blue as she wipes furiously at her face, turning back to Gigi, whose eyes sparkle with mirth and madness that only comes when you’re young, and bored and have nothing else left to try to find.

“I was about to ask you the same question.”

Their blue eyes flash with mischief, and Crystal scrambles over the counter without another word, leaving her banana sorbet bar melting behind her.

“You tell me.”

Gigi shutters the ice cream window, glass scraping on metal as Crystal’s seatbelt clicks into place.

“Where are we gonna go?”

Objectively, it’s a bad idea, climbing into a pretty stranger’s car, nothing but her phone in her back pocket, practically running away with them. into the kind of anonymous night that no one remembers the next day. 

But in her heart?

Crystal’s mind is racing, her tongue flicking around her lips to lick up the last of the sorbet, shocked that someone like Gigi would ever be interested in whisking her away, as they drive past the white picket fences of her neighborhood, and the shrubs that bordered her house, the ones that she remembered hiding behind for years as a kid.

“Gigi?”

“Yeah?”

They speed up as they hit the highway, the truck’s foglights cutting a wide swathe of white light across the road.

“Where are we gonna go?”

Gigi doesn’t take their hands off the wheel, head swiveling to meet Crystal’s darker eyes.

“I dunno. I don’t think anyone really knows where they’re going, do we?”

* * *

They park right in front of the supermarket, in the end, Gigi driving in urgent, wide circles around houses and neighborhoods older than their grandparents, weaving past fields full of discarded barns and old junkers left by the side of the road for salvage, until their white-knuckled grip around the steering wheel loosens, and the knot in Crystal’s stomach goes with it. 

They turn the radio, all the way up, until Crystal is screaming with the music, too, laughing, when she asks Gigi whether or not they can only play Ice Cream Truck music in an ice cream truck. Gigi snaps their fingers, shaking their hair free of their checkered headband to the beat of the music, winking at Crystal when they blast through a red light in the middle of a town square. 

It’s rebellion that rides on the very right side, leaving Crystal breathless as headlights flicker on in a parking lot they speed right by. 

“Shit, is that the cops?” 

“Nah. That would mean anyone gives a fuck about it here.”

“It’s not the worst place on earth.”, Crystal murmurs, catching Gigi’s eye in the side mirror, their hair blown wide around her neck from their open windows and dancing with their seatbelts still on. 

“I guess the people make it worth it, right?” 

Crystal nods, hating the feeling that Gigi is teasing her, like the other shoe will drop and Gigi won’t think she’s cool enough to be speeding in her ice cream truck with; the same self-doubt that keeps her biting down on her bottom lip; crawling up her throat, sore with sugar from the sorbet bars. 

“I wanna show you something. Want to see?” 

“Okay.” 

Gigi makes a U-turn, and they’re barreling towards the supermarket, the neon sign above the store’s logo flickering like it has for what must be the last twelve years at least, green and yellow and white bars of light flashing against Gigi’s pale, sharp, cheeks as they cut the gas, and turn to Crystal with the kind of intensity she’s only ever seen on episodes of Gossip Girl. 

Their hands, tipped with those perfect nails, reach across the gear shift, gripping Crystal’s with a tight squeeze, their eyes locked together, like a line they both never want to cross. 

“I think- _when I’m with you, I’m happy._ ”, Gigi tells her, breath clean and hot on Crystal’s skin. 

“You’re cool, too, I guess, but we’ve only known each other for like- an hour.”

“I don’t think I’m happy- normally, with… anybody else.”, Gigi blurts out, the quiet night fading in neon-yellow urgency, Gigi’s hands searching up Crystal’s forearm, like they’re searching for a pulse in completely the wrong place. 

“Maybe- maybe you should tell someone…- that isn’t me, you know? That shit can really get you if you let it.” 

“Maybe. Okay, c’mon, Crystal.” 

They tug on Crystal’s arm, impatient while she unbuckles her seatbelt, pulling her along, like Gigi’s going to take them both to the very edge of a cliff, to look down at something incredible, like the couples by the ocean Crystal’s obsessed with watching on her Instagram. 

An expanse of blanched concrete stretches out before them, Gigi swinging their linked arms together, the gravel underneath their boots crunching just a little bit, pressing into the earth like Gigi’s fingers, wrapping tightly around Crystal’s wrist. 

The truck waits behind them, its’ console lights still on, the cool blue glow of the freezers cutting through square windows, blue and green meeting as Gigi sways, taking Crystal with them, the two of them falling into each other chests, barely keeping their balance as they walk over jagged cracks in the concrete.

“Turn around.” 

Gigi braces their arm against the small of Crystal’s back, their touch edging against Crystal’s spine and nearly making her jump. 

“Gigi-”

“Just _look_.”

Crystal feels her eyes open up a little wider, following the perfect line of Gigi’s arm to their pointed finger, angled up to where the neon lights taper off; into a thin, gray line where the sky meets the ground, opening into a black cone lit only with pinpricks of faraway stars. 

She swears if she squints, Crystal can see some of the stars float across the sky; made up of airplanes that chart courses through the empty night, a hundred stories that she’ll never hear in the total quiet around them, cut through only with Gigi’s paced breaths. 

She catches Gigi’s hand in hers again, guiding their finger to point up to a flickering, yellow ball of light, travelling so fast it must be a jet on its way to cross the ocean. 

“ _Make a wish._ ”, she whispers, her chin resting on the coarse fabric stretched across Gigi’s shoulder. 

The light flares again, a signal sent to a place neither of them can see, and Crystal lets her cheek press against Gigi’s, the pounding in her heart long quieted. 

It’s no surprise; when they shift against Crystal’s touch, turning to face her; full, sticky lips pressing against her sugar-stained face, Gigi’s tongue pressing against chapped skin as Crystal relaxes into the kiss, letting her lips lock to theirs, eyes shutting against static green light when Gigi tips her head back, tightening their grip around Crystal’s middle. 

“I guess, it really works.”, Gigi’s murmurs into Crystal’s hair; breathless as they break for air. 

_“What else did you wish for?”_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm migrating most of my fics from my Tumblr to here, just to keep it organized and nice! If you wanna talk about fics or anything, or request something, my tumblr is on my a03 profile if you click on my username!


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